He was still in school when he started working the front desk of a hotel in Tamarindo, trying to pick up English and get comfortable with computers along the way. The female tourists liked him, he got along fine with the guys too, and before long he was going out most nights — drinking, smoking, something he'd rarely done before. Every night felt like a party.
It didn't last. He started showing up late, and then he was caught with one of the female guests. He was fired on the spot, and paying for school suddenly got a lot harder. He was still spending too much on going out, and eventually he had to drop out altogether. That's when everything piled up at once.
No one in tourism would hire him after that. He worked as a bricklayer for a while before finally landing a job as a gardener at a hotel — foreign-owned, like most of them here. He's never once met the owner. The people who run the place live in their own country, and the manager who handles everything day to day doesn't seem to care much either way. The pay is better than bricklaying was, he says, but it all feels impersonal.
Wanting to move forward, he used his first real savings last year to sign up for an English course in his town. Like most of the young people who work here, he lives a village away — land close to the hotels has gotten too expensive. Several others from his village enrolled in the same course: a textbook, two hours of class every afternoon after work, for a month. At one point, an American showed up and spoke English so fast that none of them could follow a word.
“I've regretted the drugs and the alcohol ever since. I've been straight for a year now.”
They got a diploma at the end anyway, even though nobody had actually learned anything. The certificate turned out to be worthless — it cost him his savings and left him nowhere further ahead. It's not the first time, he says: people see money in them and take advantage, and no one ever really does anything about it. Not even the workers themselves, who all agree they should organise against it, and then never do. He knows it's foolish. It's also just how it goes.
He's signed up for another course since then, paid for it a month ago, and heard nothing back. What's stayed with him is the regret — for the drugs, for the drinking, for all of it. He's been clean for a year now and finally thinking seriously about his future. If he could ask one thing of every tourist who comes through Tamarindo, it's this: help keep the town free of drugs. Don't take part in it — and tell others his story instead.